


one final burden

by excelxiors



Category: The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Angst, Blow Jobs, Come Eating, Coming Out, Fluff, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, but it also has feelings and some plot its not just sex lol, this might be cringy i have never written sex before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 15:01:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20695481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excelxiors/pseuds/excelxiors
Summary: i just wanted to get this one final burden off of my chest. it was my last big secret, and once it was out in the world I thought maybe, just maybe, i would be free.





	one final burden

**Author's Note:**

> so im back with more stuff! once again, nice comments make my day and im so happy people actually enjoy reading what i write. this time its sex though so im not sure if its good or if its very awkward haha
> 
> tw for talks of suicide and drug addiction and also sex stuff but you knew that already

After the dust settled, I went to Antwerp. The painting was no longer mine, but it was safe, back where it should have been all of those painful years. Ridding myself of that burden meant that maybe, finally, I could move on. Put that chapter of my life behind me and heal. The reward money meant I could right the many wrongs I had committed over the years; compensate all of the people I had scammed by buying back all of the changeling antiques I had sold as originals. I’m not a saint, but I felt bad about the things I had done and the people I had hurt. The prospect of going back to New York right away scared me, though I knew I would have to do it eventually. I would have to go back, face Hobie and Kitsey and Mrs. Barbour. Apologize. Make things right. Boris, though, had talked me into going with him to Antwerp, at least for a little while. Actually, he had begged me to do so, crying “Potter, please! You cannot go back to New York and disappear for another 10 years!” I wasn’t in any rush to get back to New York (courtesy of my aversion to being confronted with my mistakes by the people I cared about), and just a few days earlier I was certain I’d lost Boris (courtesy of his gunshot wound and my poor mental state), so I agreed to go. 

Getting to Antwerp from Amsterdam was around an hour and a half ride by train. I packed my things, including my blood stained clothes and the suicide notes I had written, and met Boris at the train station in the late afternoon. He had considerably less stuff than me: a perk of living everywhere and nowhere, having houses around the world but no real home. His shoulder was still heavily bandaged and his arm in a sling, but when he saw me he outstretched his non-injured arm and wrapped me in a hug. “Potter, I am so glad you are coming. You will love Antwerp,” he said. He looked relieved that I was there in front of him. I wondered if he could see it on my face, how much I had wanted to be dead in those past few days. How close I had been to being gone forever. Maybe that was why he had asked me to come with him; because he was scared for me. It wouldn’t have been the first time. As kids, he had stayed by my side constantly, afraid of the things I would do if he wasn’t there, and afraid of the things I did when I was drunk or high. Laying in the street begging to be dead, jumping from the roof into the pool, and trying to drink more than what would have been safe, though we were so young that none of it was very safe at all.

The train ride went by relatively quickly. Nobody knew who we were, nobody was looking for us anymore, and we enjoyed each others company in a silence that was unusual for us. Seeing that Boris was safe and sitting next to me alive and almost completely unharmed gave me one of the biggest senses of relief I had felt in over a decade, comparable only to knowing the painting was safe and that the burden of it’s whereabouts wasn’t on me anymore. I don’t know what possessed me to do so, but the impulse to grab Boris’s hand was so strong that I couldn’t resist. His unharmed left arm pressed against my right, and I wrapped my fingers around his hand, squeezing tight. Boris was here, next to me. He was alive and he was okay and I could feel his pulse through my fingers. His heart was still beating. He gave me a funny look, as I was very rarely the one to initiate any sort of physical contact, especially in public. I had always been so afraid of what people would think if they saw me and Boris together, but not now. I was so sure I had lost him that any reminder he was still alive came as a warm welcome. He grasped my fingers back tightly, and we sat like that, hand in hand, until we got to Antwerp and had to let go of each other.

Boris took me to his apartment, a small but well furnished one bedroom in the heart of the city. Antwerp was beautiful, all old buildings and muted colors on the backdrop of a beautiful blue sky. He saw me staring at the architecture, making fun of me for my love of “old shit”, as he called it. I couldn’t deny that it was true. But better than any architecture or antiques or “old shit” was finally being able to drop my bags, take off my shoes, and relax. To sit down on Boris’ couch and not have to worry about any of the things that had plagued me for nearly half of my life. “You want food?” Boris asked, standing in front of his fridge.

“I’m good.” I laid down on the couch, curling up against the back, my face away from Boris and the rest of the room.

“When was last time you ate? I worry about you, Potter.”

“Uhh, yesterday I think?” I wasn’t sure. It definitely hadn’t been any time today, but maybe it hadn’t been yesterday either. The thought of eating made me nauseous after having nearly puked myself to death just a few days before. “I’m okay, though. Not hungry.”

“Please just eat something small. Bread and sugar? Like old times?” This had made me smile a bit. Back in Las Vegas, we ate bread with sugar nearly every day. Boris never had much else at his house, and this meal born of desperation made me think of him in the many years we spent apart. I sometimes made it when I felt particularly bad, thinking of Boris as I cried.

“Okay. Just one piece, though. I’m really not hungry, Boris.” He made it quickly, pulling a piece of sliced bread out of a bag, covering it with butter (something we didn’t do as children), and then sprinkling white sugar over the top. 

“Here, Potter. Las Vegas, Nevada delicacy,” he smiled. His new teeth were startlingly white and straight, such a contrast to the crooked yellow I remembered from my childhood. I accepted the plate from him, hoping that the food wouldn’t make me puke. It didn’t. After a bite, I realized how hungry I actually was, wolfing down the sweet bread and asking Boris for another, which he quickly made.

“Thanks.” It felt weird to be thanking Boris for food. We were here in _his_ place, not his dad’s, but it still felt like we were kids again, desperate and hungry: making bread with sugar and messing around with one another. “Where should I put my things?”

“Just put them in the bedroom.” He gestured to the bedroom door, and then to the door off to the side. “And this is bathroom, if you need to shower or anything like that.”

“Alright. Thank you.” It was all pretty shocking to me, Boris having some semblance of a life that was put together. I knew he was involved in shady business and I knew about his addictions: heroin, mostly, but also booze and cocaine and just about anything he could get his hands on. He had always been able to function surprisingly well intoxicated and high out of his mind, but the fact that he had made a life for himself while keeping up his habits was almost impressive. 

I put my things down in Boris’ bedroom, which was relatively empty other than a dresser, a queen sized bed, and a side table, though all of the pieces of furniture were quite nice. I took Boris up on his offer to shower, stripping out of my Amsterdam clothes, standing under the hot water until it ran cool, and then changing into something more comfortable. When I walked back into the bedroom Boris was there, sprawled out on his bed over the blankets. “Are you feeling better?” he asked.

“Not really.” I hadn’t been feeling particularly great those past few days, what with killing a man, thinking Boris was gone, and wishing I was gone myself.

“Come, Potter.” He patted the bed next to where he was laying, and I sat down there. It was so strange to be next to him in a bed again, like we were kids. As kids our beds were much smaller, but we were smaller too. Now, as adults, the queen sized bed felt about the same. I was close enough to Boris to smell him, all cologne and cigarette smoke. “Tell me,” he whispered, “what is wrong.” I laid down, so my face was on the same level as his, and closed my eyes.

“I killed that man, Boris. And then I went back to the hotel, and you didn’t come for days, and I though you were dead. I though they had gotten you somehow or that when you were shot it was worse than I thought or-” Boris reached his good hand out, and touched my face. I was rambling, getting worked up. And he had noticed, stroking my face until my breathing calmed down, though I wasn’t finished, meaning the rambling would undoubtedly come back. “You didn’t come for days and I thought they were coming to get me. That they were going to kill me too. And it was all so unbearable. I was writing notes and-”

“No,” he interrupted. He sounded heartbroken, like I had just given him the worst possible news I could have given him.

“I thought you were dead, Boris,” was the only explanation I could give. “I wrote to Pippa and Hobie and Mrs. Barbour and Kitsey but the only person I could think about was you. I chugged vodka and whiskey and the rest of the little bottles in the hotel fridge, and I was going to take pills, but you showed up.” I was crying now, and Boris’ good arm was draped around my neck, stroking the skin behind my ear. “I was puking, bad. The whole bathroom smelled like bile and alcohol and I was cursing myself for not taking the pills earlier, but then you showed up and I thanked God I hadn’t. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me, Boris.”

“I am so sorry, Potter. I should have found a way to contact you. Call you, tell you I was okay. Get to you sooner.” He seemed distressed at the idea that I had been waiting for him.

“None of it was your fault and you don’t need to apologize. You’re here now.” Laying in bed with Boris after so long stirred feelings within me that I hadn’t thought about in years. I knew now that they were feelings of love. Attraction. As a kid, the idea had disgusted me. It was wrong and unnatural and I’d play off all of the nearly sexual encounters we had as horny teenagers just fooling around. It never felt like fooling around to me, and I don’t think it did to Boris either, but we never talked about it. I was too afraid and he never brought it up, so we didn’t. 

“Will you be alright if I take shower, Potter? I will be quick.”

“Yeah, don’t worry. Go ahead.” I laid in Boris’ bed, the smell of him on the pillows and blankets, and thought about Kitsey, of all people. Beautiful, rich, smart Kitsey, who I didn’t love. It wasn’t because of anything she had done, not really. She had cheated on me with Tom Cable, which hurt, but it didn’t make me love her any less than I already did. I had never loved her at all. If I couldn’t love a girl like Kitsey, who could I love? Not Pippa, certainly. She wasn’t as beautiful as Kitsey, though I had always found her unusual looks charming. She didn’t have Kitsey’s money or intelligence, and had been badly stunted by the accident. I thought for so many years that I loved her. I didn’t. She had told me time and time again that we were bad for one another, and I had ignored her. She reminded me of that day and of my mother and of everything I had before, but it wasn’t love. It was an obsession, and realizing that she had moved on and I hadn’t was difficult, because it left me with nobody. There were no women I loved. No women I saw on the streets that I found attractive or wanted to sleep with, not in the ways other men I knew did. The only person I ever thought about was Boris. My body squished next to Boris’ in bed when we were kids, Boris’ hands on me all of those nights, Boris’ lips on mine before I left for New York.

Boris came back into his bedroom wearing boxers and a t-shirt, his dark curls dripping wet. “Okay, Potter?” he asked. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Scoot over, then.” He motioned for me to move, and I made space in the bed for him to lie down next to me. We had shared a bed so many times that it shouldn’t have been weird, but the last time I had laid next to Boris I was 15. At the time, I hadn’t been truthful with myself about how I felt. 

“Boris, I need to tell you something.” It came out fast, before I could stop myself. I just wanted to get this one final burden off of my chest. It was my last big secret, and once it was out in the world I thought maybe, just maybe, I would be free. 

“Yes?” With just a t-shirt on, I could see all of Boris’ arms. They looked thin and weak, covered in track marks from years of serious and repeated drug use. 

“I love you.”

“I know this, Potter. I love you too.” He smiled at me, showing his perfect new teeth.

“No, Boris.” I didn’t know how to say it. I had never said it before, not to anyone. Not even Hobie, who would have understood everything I was going through. “I’m gay.”

“You were always big homo, Potter. I know this already.”

“I’m sorry. I love you and I always wanted you to love me back but you’re not gay and I can’t expect you to be something you’re not it’s just-”

“You are stupid, Potter. I like women, yes, but I like you too. Always liked you. Don’t like to label but bisexual, yes? That is the word?”

I was dumbfounded, so I replied only with “Yeah, that’s the word.”

“You are surprised?” He seemed surprised that I was surprised. He was smiling, and his hand was on my face, his thumb rubbing over my cheekbone.

“Yeah,” I breathed out. I was so relieved that I started to cry. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are you crying? I thought you would be happy, Potter.” He was being coy, I could tell. Joking around with me.

This made me laugh. “I_ am _happy. It’s just all so much. I never thought I’d say it, I was always too afraid.”

“I will ask you something, and you need to answer me honestly,” Boris said.

“Okay, yeah. Anything.”

“What teenage boy sucks another teenage boy’s dick if he is straight?”

“You, I thought!” I realized then how stupid it all sounded. Once, maybe, but Boris and I had given each other handjobs on many occasions and he had sucked my dick more than once back in Vegas. “I was ashamed, and I thought you were too. You never said anything, and you always talked about girls. You and Kotku, god! It was Kotku this and Kotku that!”

“She was fun sex, yes. But not love, Potter. You were love.” He kissed me then, pulling my face close with his good hand, as his other arm laid at his side in its sling. It wasn’t like the kisses of our youth, quick and desperate and shameful. It was slow and passionate, his mouth warm against mine. I wasn’t ashamed of my desire for Boris anymore, at least not in private, and I kissed him like it was the only thing in the world that mattered. Maybe it was. A couple of times my teeth knocked into his and we laughed, pulling each other closer. 

He started to bite my lower lip and he must have heard me gasp because, lips still against mine, he whispered “You good?” 

“Yeah,” I moaned. “It’s good.” He moved down to my neck, sucking the skin there. My face was in his hair now, and I grabbed the dark, wet curls to ground myself. It felt like a dream, being here with Boris as he sucked bruises into my neck and then kissed the tender skin. He was almost completely on top of me, kissing and sucking bruises down my neck and chest. My hands were on the sheets, in his hair, around his neck, anywhere I could grab to remind myself that this was real. That Boris had his warm mouth on me and that he loved me too, enough to want to do all of this. 

I felt him, then. He was hard, his boner pressing through his boxers and against my leg. He was grinding against me, and I could hear his breaths growing heavier. “Let me,” I said, my hands on the waistband of his boxers, waiting for him to say yes.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I want to.”

“Okay.” He smiled, and continued to kiss me. My neck, my mouth, my jaw. I slipped my hand into his boxers, and he gasped at the touch. I had never done this before, not to anyone else, but I put my hands around his dick and began to jerk him off in the same way I had done to myself hundreds of times before. Within a few minutes, he was breathing hard. He was close, and with a few more strokes he came into my hand. I didn’t know what to do, so I licked most of it off of my hand, wiping the rest on my pants. “That was so good, Theo. Thank you.” He never called me Theo. “Want me to take care of yours?”

“Yeah, Borya. Please.”

“Borya, huh?” He grinned as he pulled my pants down, exposing my hard and almost painful erection. He wrapped his mouth around my dick, bobbing his head up and down, licking the tip, and using his good hand to jerk me off a bit. After an embarrassingly short amount of time, I came into his mouth. He must have swallowed it, because he kissed me shortly afterwards and it was gone, only a bit of a bitter taste remaining. 

We laid together for a while, kissing each other and coming down from our orgasms. I was afraid I would wake up and that Boris would be gone, but that didn’t happen. He was still next to me, breathing and alive and beautiful. He was real. “Boris, I love you.”

“I love you too, Potter.”

“Do you think maybe you could come to New York with me? Leave your business behind, get clean? We have the reward money now, we could do it. We would never need to work again. Come home with me, Boris.” I didn’t know if any of it was realistic, but I had dreamed about it for years. Boris coming to live with me in New York, saying with me and Hobie before we bought our own place. Both of us getting better, turning our lives around.

“Not yet, I don’t think. I am in it all too deep.”

“Soon?” I asked. I was desperate. I wanted him so badly, and knowing he wanted me too made it even worse. We could have each other, but not if we were an ocean apart.

“Perhaps, yes.” He was looking past me, at the wall.

“What’s wrong?” 

“I don’t know who I am without all of this, Potter. Coming off heroin? It is terrifying. The withdrawals and the detox? I am afraid.” He seemed ashamed. Boris was fearless, but this was one thing he was afraid of.

“You’re the strongest person I know, Boris. We can find a place that specializes in this sort of stuff, and I’d be with you the whole time. We could be happy together.” I lifted his arm, looking at the mass of track marks, and kissed them. “I worry about you every day, Boris. That every time I see you might be the last. I don’t want to lose you.” I grabbed onto him, kissing his lips and then his cheeks, which salty tears had begun to stream down.

“Soon, Potter. Go back home, make everything right, and I will follow. It won’t be like last time, I promise. I will come, and we will be happy. Just give me a little bit of time. A few weeks at the most.” 

“I can stay, Boris. I’ll wait for you to sort everything out and we can go back together. Please. I don’t want to leave you. Not now.”

He took a minute to think, his eyes locked with mine. “Okay. We will go soon, I promise. To New York. To our life together.”


End file.
